BEIJING, China (CNN) -- Up to 5,000 people are feared to have been killed by Monday's powerful earthquake in just one affected region of central China, the Chinese government said.
Rescuers try to help a child trapped in the rubble at Juyuan Middle School in Dujiangyan City.
State-run news agency Xinhua said authorities in Sichuan Province believed about 10,000 people were injured, in Beichuan County, in the northeastern part of the province.
The Sichuan provincial disaster relief headquarters said 80 percent of the buildings collapsed in the Beichuan Qiang Autonomous County after the 7.8-magnitude quake, Xinhua reported.
Several hundred students are also feared to be buried in collapsed school buildings, the agency said.
The quake was "felt in most parts of China," Xinhua reported, with the confirmed casualties in the provinces and municipality of Sichuan, Gansu, Chongqing and Yunnan.
Xinhua said several schools collapsed, at least partially, in the quake.
At one, as many as 900 students were feared buried. At least 50 bodies have been pulled from the rubble at the high school in the Juyuan Township of Dujiangyan City in Wenchuan County.
"Some buried teenagers were struggling to break loose from underneath the ruins while others were crying out for help," Xinhua reported.
"Grieved parents watched as five cranes were excavating at the site and an ambulance was waiting.
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"An unknown number of students were also reported buried after buildings collapsed at five other schools in the province's Deyang City."
One person was killed in Santai County, in the city of Mianyang, when a water tower fell, the news agency reported.
A provincial government spokesman said they feared more dead and injured in collapsed houses in Dujiangyan City, Xinhua reported.
The news agency also quoted a driver for the seismological bureau saying he saw "rows of houses collapsed" in Dujiangyan.
Chinese President Hu Jintao immediately ordered an all-out effort to help victims of the earthquakes, Xinhua reported. It said Premier Wen Jiabao would go there to direct the rescue work. 
See workers in Chengdu hiding under their desks during the quake. »
Bonnie Thie, the country director the Peace Corps, was on a university campus in Chengdu about 100 km from the epicenter, in the eastern part of China's Sichuan province, when the first quake hit.
"You could see the ground shaking," Thie told CNN.
The shaking "went on for what seemed like a very long time," she said.
"This is a very dangerous earthquake," said Bruce Presgrave, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey.
The quake had the potential to cause major damage because of its strength and proximity to major population centers, he said. 
Read an explanation about earthquakes. »
In addition, the earthquake was relatively shallow, Presgrave said, and those kinds of quakes tend to do more damage near the epicenter than deeper ones.
An earthquake with 7.5 magnitude in the northern Chinese city of Tangshan killed 255,000 people in 1976 -- the greatest death toll from an earthquake in the last four centuries and the second greatest in recorded history, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Tangshan is roughly 1,600 km from Chengdu, the nearest major city to the epicenter of Monday's quake.
After the first quake struck Monday, the ground shook as far away as Beijing, which is 1,500 km from the epicenter.
They felt "a very quiet rolling sensation" that lasted for about a minute, according to CNN correspondent John Vause.
"Our building began to sway," he said.
Thousands of people were evacuated from Beijing high-rises immediately after the earthquake.
At least six more earthquakes -- measuring between 4.0 and 6.0 magnitudes -- happened nearby over the three hours after the initial quake at at 2:28 p.m. local time (0728 GMT), the USGS reported.
A spokesman for the Beijing Olympic Committee said no Olympic venues were affected by the earthquake. The massive Three Gorges Dam -- roughly 600 km east of the epicenter -- was not damaged, a spokesman said.
The earthquake was also felt in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Taiwan, and as far away as Hanoi, Vietnam, and Bangkok, Thailand, according to the Hong Kong-based Mandarin-language channel Phoenix TV.- Story Highlights
- NEW: 5,000 feared dead after major earthquake rocks central China
- 900 children also buried when a school building collapsed, 50 bodies found
- State news agency says several schools collapsed after 7.8 magnitude quake
- Officials expect death toll to continue rising
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